Junot Diaz's numerous references to the universe of JRR Tolkien in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao turn out to be more than a simple allusion to fantastic works. Trujillato's recurring comparisons to the power of Sauron are more than mere metaphors. These are descriptions. Diaz uses his references to describe people and situations, in real life, that have no other way to be described. The first direct quote from Oscar de Leon is: "What's more science fiction than Santo Domingo?" What could be more fantastic than the West Indies? (6). Diaz gives direct meaning to this statement through Yunior's knowledge and love of the speculative genre, which he borrowed from Oscar, and parallels the world we live in with the fantasy world of Middle Earth , from Lord of the Rings. The text delivers a serious blow, requiring us to rethink what we consider “speculative.” Yunior makes us realize that there are people and places as evil, as powerful and as terrifying in this world as in fantasies that seem unrealistic. Trujillo's dictatorship was not like Sauron's reign; it was the reign of Sauron. No matter how much we choose to assert that it is impossible for our world to harbor an evil as terrible as Sauron, Diaz maintains that it is. The first and most important allusion to Tolkien's alternate world is that in which the dictator of Santo Domingo, Rafael Trujillo, is described as the Dark Lord of Mordor – Sauron. Diaz writes: "At first glance, he was only a prototypical Latin American caudillo, but his power was terminal in a way that few historians or writers have ever truly captured or, I would argue, imagined . He was our Sauron” (2). Diaz wastes no time in stating how he and the people of Santo Do...... middle of paper ..., without killing them, making them a "vegetable" (251). We don't believe that this kind of horror exists in the real world. It is dismissed in the speculative genre alongside lava pits and crocodile pools; yet it exists. These things happened. And Oscar seems to be the only one who can see that these aspects of what is considered a fictional world are actually real. The actions and deeds of the Trujillatos were so terrible, so supernatural, that Diaz cannot describe the purity of evil that they were without explaining it through Lord of the Rings. Diaz states that the evil we believe exists only in science fiction and that fantasy is not simply a fictional attribute of horrible leaders. This evil and the dark forces that possess it thrive in our world with the same intensity as in Middle-earth. Both were Sauron. Both were Trujillo.